You're right - I've never heard that expression in English.
Having said that, for some countries, it's true. Quite a few places (Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Canada, some Hong Kong denominations, and probably many others) now use the polymer banknotes which really don't have much of a smell, unlike the old paper/linen notes. I suppose coins still have a bit of a smell though (metallic-ish).
Don't get me wrong, I was a big Q3A player back in the day too. And Counterstrike (1.5, not 1.6 or the newer Source-engine based ones).
I'm talking specifically about the type of MMO I like here. First person shooters are a completely different genre, with a different set of desirable attributes. I'm not a fan of some of the modern FPSs that require you to do RPG-like grinding to level your character or unlock certain weapons etc.
While you're right that grinding and luck play a part in the type of game described, it's not without skill. It's just not "twitch skills" like in Q3A type games. It's long term strategy, efficiency, crunching the numbers and risks to determine what the best way of going about things is. It's also your interpersonal skills: should your clan ally itself with Powerful Clan X for protection, or will their bad reputation among others on the server make you more of a target if you do so? Should you invest in buying up a lot of Crafting Material Y because certain player-driven events are likely to drive the price of that material up in the future? Etc.
Horses for courses - I love games like EvE. If death is meaningless, or just a mild inconvenience, there is little incentive to play well, to think strategically, to form alliances with people you can truly trust, etc. But the adrenaline rush when you have something valuable and irreplaceable on the line? It's great. You need risk vs. reward in games... if it's just reward (like WoW and other 'modern' MMOs) then what's the point?
I haven't actually played EvE myself but I've played MMOs with similarly brutal mechanics. Games where attempting to craft good equipment takes literally months of work and careful trading, all for just a 50/50 chance of success (on a diceroll - failure to craft consumes all the crafting materials and money required and gives you absolutely nothing back at all). Games where you drop equipment on death that can be picked up by anyone, no matter if it's the rarest and most valuable item on the server. Games where you can attack and kill anyone, any time (but, there are consequences for doing so, so you better make sure you know what you're doing). These games require you to be be strategic, to be alert and understand the other people you are playing with, to hedge your bets and to think outside the box. They are driven by the players and the intricate politics between powerful guilds/clans/etc, rather than a pre-defined storyline or script.
Of course that's just my opinion and you are welcome to your own. But there is a market for this kind of cutthroat game... EvE's long-term success is proof of that. I wish I had discovered EvE years ago. It's exactly what I want in a game but by the time I found out about it I figured it was too late to 'get in' and I'd never be able to catch up to the established players (in terms of wealth, power, or whatever). I'm waiting for the next similar thing... if it ever comes.
Well it's all relative. I grew up in Canberra so am definitely a cold weather person more than a hot weather person (though, Canberra gets both... can be well below zero in winter, -7 or -8, and yet still hit 40 C in summer).
I'm living in the Midwest US at the moment though and that's a whole different kind of cold. This morning it was minus 29 C (and the high temperature was only minus 19 or so)...
Thanks for the stats... confirms what I thought. Both AU and NZ are big travellers.
The Aussie passport also has 48 pages but lasts 10 years, interestingly. You can choose to get a double-length 96 page one for a small extra fee though.
For US residents/citizens, there is no outgoing immigration form to fill out, nor a desk you have to line up at and be let through, like in Australia (where you have both the green and yellow forms, one of incoming, one for outgoing).
Surrendering your I-94 or other temporary document upon leaving the US is not the same as a proper, compulsory immigration check upon departure.
BTW I'm Australian but live in the US and have done so for the last decade. I travel between the two regularly. So I do have some experience in this area.
I've never really bought into the animosity (good-humoured or otherwise) between Australians and New Zealanders. I mean, I just don't get it. When I was in NZ, it seemed at every opportunity, my hosts were jumping to compare things to Australia or make some snarky comment about Australians. As if they think we spend all our time over here thinking we are superior or comparing ourselves to you, or something.
I'd make "US vs. Canada" comparisons, but it's not really the same: New Zealand and Australia are far more similar than the US and Canada. (I've lived in both - the accents might be similar but the people and ideologies are very different). NZ is the only foreign country I've ever been in (I've been to 20+ countries) that didn't "feel" like a foreign country at all. Wandering around a NZ city feels just like Australia... same brand names/company names, same 'look and feel' in urban design, hell, even the traffic signals at crossings make that same "slow beep for stop, chirp followed by fast beeping for walk" that I associate with home...
But the average Aussie doesn't really think about NZ in the same was as many Kiwis seem to regard Australia. I never thought about NZ to a huge extent before I went there... every now and again, sure, but not to the extent NZ seems to be obsessed with comparisons to Oz. I always just thought of NZ as our very close brothers across the Tasman - the other half of the ANZACs, the only other country to which we extend special reciprocal rights (living here without a visa, access to each others' healthcare systems, etc.) We don't extend any of those courtesies to anyone else, even the Brits and Americans.
So I was a bit shocked at the fact that a lot (not all, but a lot) of New Zealanders seem to hate the place! Well maybe not hate, but their attitude definitely went beyond a bit of a good-natured ribbing. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't universal, but it was a noticeable theme in my time there (which was on a work assignment for a month, in and around Wellington, NOT a holiday). OTOH I've never heard Aussies say a bad word about NZ (outside of the context of sport, at least).
Anyway, it's no big deal, and maybe the sense of humour over there is a little different and I'm just a bad judge of what's 'serious' or not. But it certainly caught me off guard, and left a bit of a bitter taste. I always saw NZ as equal and close friends and now... I dunno, I get the impression that the feelings don't go both ways. A bit of an eye opener. And honestly, I'm not sure what we've done in the past to deserve it.
Having said that, NZ is a beautiful place and I'll still visit again one day (for a proper holiday, not work). Who knows, might even retire there (hey, I'm a Canberran so I prefer the cooler weather to the blazing heat than infests most of the rest of Australia!).
While your statement is true, it has little to do with nationalized health care, per se. It's to do with the ACC, which is a body that is quite unique to New Zealand. And a great idea, if you ask me.
Plenty of places (virtually all other developed countries, the notable exception being the USA) have nationalized health care. But many/most of those still have lawsuits for personal injury, nonetheless.
Ah nevermind - your post history suggests Kiwi:) God forbid I call a New Zealander an Australian (worse than calling a Canadian an American), apologies.
I'm Australian and just remember growing up with exactly that kind of playground so I jumped to conclusions...
I suppose as an Aussie I should look for any opportunity to put the boot into our mates across the Tasman...but I feel that I have to stand up for them here. While I can't offer any solid evidence either way, your statement immediately triggers my "that doesn't sound right" sense. I haven't spent a huge amount of time in NZ myself (about a month), but I feel that in their travel habits they are similar to Australians, who are huge travellers (both within Australia and overseas). 70-75% of adult Australians have a passport and they use it too, with roughly a quarter of the population of the country travelling overseas in any given year (unlike the US, Australia has both incoming AND outgoing immigration checks, so we have very accurate statistics on this stuff).
Now to be clear, I'm not saying that:
- Your observation isn't true; or
- That Kiwis are the same as Aussies (culturally or otherwise).
But something doesn't add up here. The two countries are located in the same area of the world, with similar migrant and historical ties to Europe and other areas of the world. Both have a 'gap year' tradition where overseas travel is almost a rite of passage for kids after finishing school. Both have similar entitlements in terms of annual leave/vacation, long service leave (which IMO is the #1 reason Americans don't travel more - they get much less time off than other OECD nations), etc. So your observation is a bit puzzling.
However, one thought I did have is that "going to the other island" or going overseas requires a flight in NZ (with the exception of those living close to a car ferry or alternative way of linking the two islands). Californians may have visited OR, NV, AZ and Mexico... but they can just get in a car and... go. The middle-class/wealthier families have flown to Hawaii, and I think THAT is the apt comparison as it requires a (comparatively expensive) flight. Car travel is less of a barrier than air travel, even disregarding price. Requires less planning and organisation. Less documentation too. That might explain it to some extent. I wonder what's the percentage of people in CA that have been to HI, versus the percentage of NZers who have been to the other island?
Anyway yeah... your anecdote surprises me I have to say. Never thought of NZ as insular at all...
Yeah - none of the other social networks, including MySpace, had anywhere near the penetration that FB does now. Across age groups and across different countries. I live outside the US and although we were certainly aware MySpace existed, even in its heyday I knew almost nobody with a MySpace account. But Facebook? 1.2 billion users... that's literally every second man, woman and child in the developed world (roughly).
It's popular because it's so useful single point of call to keep in touch with almost everyone you know. That wouldn't be the case if only 30% or 50% of the people you know are on there (with the rest being reachable by email, a different social network, or some other means). But for me, it's 90%+. It's hit that critical point where it has ~almost~ everyone on it, not just your 'Internet friends', but even the non-techy people (up to and including grandparents who don't touch a computer for any other reason, including email). Its attractiveness as a single point of contact is immense (efficient, simple, don't have to worry about maintaining x number of different accounts on different networks etc.)
It'll take something radically better from a competitor to break that momentum. I don't think it will die from natural attrition alone. Some have said "now that parents are on Facebook, kids will go somewhere else". While that's true, I doubt they'll forego Facebook altogether, due to above-mentioned ubiquity. They may just have FB account AND a "next cool thing" account, whatever that will be.
I also had the adapter that would allow you to use full size Master System cartridges on the GG (internally the hardware of the two machines was almost identical, so the adapter did little else than convert the pin layout of the large MS cartridges to the smaller GG ones and do some funkiness to account for the different aspect ratios of the screens). That greatly expanded the library of games you could play on it. However the adapter and the Master System cartridges were obviously very bulky!
Cost definitely had something to do with it, but as one of the few people who used to have a Game Gear when I was in primary school (all my friends had Game Boys), the number one thing that sucked about the GG was the battery life. Because it had a backlit, colour screen, it only lasted an hour or two on batteries, whereas the GB would last all day.
Not only that, the GG required six AA batteries and these were damn expensive at the rate you went through them. You could use rechargeables but they lasted even less time than non-rechargeable batteries. I recall spending most of my time playing the GG plugged into AC power.
That doesn't sound right. There were 1.26 million votes cast in 2011 and 1.4 million votes cast this year (source: the official Hottest 100 webpage and Wikipedia). I can't find last year's figures but they would be somewhere in that range.
Fairly impressive for a country with a population of ~23M.
Replying to myself here, but just had to add, I took a look at the map to see exactly where this ISP serves. It's a tiny little town. In fact, I've actually been there (!?), as I drove from Dubuque to Cedar Falls on a recent trip to the US and this place falls on the highway between them. Small world.
Either way, even in a similar small town in Australia, you wouldn't be paying anywhere near that much, even if Telstra was your only option (provided you had a phone line of course... if satellite was your only option then it may be comparable).
I'm Australian so are more than used to metered internet access. Unlike most Slashdotters, I like the concept of metered internet, in that it gives you options to only pay for what you need and not subsidise other users so much. Grandpa who just checks his email every day can get by fine on the $15 plan that has minimal allowance, while Johnny McTorrentLeecher can cough up for the large quota or unlimited plans.
But even in Australia, a country with a higher cost of living than the US and less in the way of developed internet infrastructure, the costs of metered plans are far, far lower than those quoted in TFA. 100 bucks for 25 GB is like something out of the early 2000s, when broadband itself was relatively new and DSL was mostly of the 256 kbps or 512 kbps variety. For comparison, the offerings of two Australian ISPs that are roughly indicative of a typical "cheaper ISP" and "more expensive but better quality ISP":
(And you can take $20/month off the above if you bundle a home phone service with the same provider too)
Comparing to this, this Iowa ISP's prices are insane. Metering sucks if THAT is what you have to pay (particularly in a country where unlimited plans are ubiquitous for less money).
Metering CAN work well, and CAN be fair (pay for what you need... light users don't have to subsidize the heavy users). But it requires proper choice of plans (within an ISP) and proper competition BETWEEN ISPs to work. If there's a monopoly then yeah, it's very unfair. Fortunately for all the issues we have with internet in Australia, most people in urban or suburban areas (which is 90%+ of the population) do enjoy good ISP competition. If you have a phone line, then you can get DSL from a wide range of providers (at least a dozen, sometimes up to 20, depending on location).
No, this is nothing like Australia. Those rates are obscene. Australia may have metered internet but the prices are far, far lower.
25 USD for 5 GB? (Australian ISPs would typically give you ~50 GB for $30 AUD, which is roughly equal in value)
99.95 USD for a paltry 25 GB? WTF? 100 bucks in Australia gets you unlimited plans the ISPs that offer unlimited (e.g. TPG) or very-high-quota plans with others (Internode, one of the more expensive ISPs, gives you 1.2 TERAbytes per month for $109 AUD).
This is only "Welcome to Australia" if the Australia you're talking about is the Australia of the year 2000.
I'm 30. I drive about the same amount now as I did a decade ago - that is, not much at all. But the reasons are different.
10 years ago I lived on campus at university. Meals were provided and I had a downtown area within a 15-20 min walking distance (for going to a movie, eating out, etc). My classes were all a 5-10 minute walk away. So the only time I really drove was when me or my friends wanted to go somewhere further afield. Most of them didn't even own a car so we usually took mine. A new restaurant on the other side of the city or the odd weekend road trip to a different city a few hundred km away. But that was about it.
I hated that car. It was dirt cheap to buy but keeping it was so expensive for a poor starving student with virtually no disposable income. Registration/third party insurance was like 800 bucks a year and keeping it parked on campus near where I lived incurred a hefty fee too. I didn't even bother insuring it - wasn't worth it (other than the compulsory third party insurance that forms part of the registration fee where I live). It had plenty of mechanical issues that were quite costly to deal with too. It taught me that frankly, if you can get by without a car, you should do it, even if it's slightly less convenient. They are just money suckers.
Now I am married and make a good income. I could easily afford to drive as much as I wanted. However, I still don't drive much, and the main reason is the internet. I'm a consultant and so my time is split between working at home, or working onsite for a client, who could be anywhere in the country. So I FLY quite a bit now - several times a month, but probably don't drive many more miles than I did back in university. My wife and I go out, and do the grocery shopping once a week etc. but that doesn't add up to that much really.
Anyway I imagine the drop in teenage driving is due mostly to what I found driving when I was younger. It's very expensive to keep a car. It's not so much the cost of fuel but the other costs of keeping a vehicle. Most younger people I talk to say the same thing - waste of money. They prefer taking the bus/train (public transport is OKish in this city, though by no means excellent). Or they'll just get a taxi. Catching a cab a couple of times a week still ends up much cheaper than owning a car.
Very true. I'm Australian and moved to America last year, so I have some personal experience of this.
In Australia I lived around 500 metres from the closest grocery store and we often walked there and filled a couple of large hessian bags with groceries and walked back. The groceries would last several days. The walk itself took 15 minutes out of your day and was a pleasant stroll through low density suburbia - on the sidewalk at first, then on a bike path behind the local high school, past a park and over a pedestrian bridge to the local shopping area.
I now live in America in a similar suburban area (large homes on separate blocks etc.) and the closest supermarket is, by luck, even closer. Maybe 150 metres or so - can literally see the roof of it out the window. However, despite the area being very similar in terms of density and layout, walking there is significantly more difficult. Firstly, while my street has a sidewalk, some don't. From where I am, I have to walk down this unsaved embankment next to a road and look very awkward in doing so. Not to mention its covered with knee deep snow this time of year. Secondly I then have to cross a four lane road and there is no tunnel, bridge or signalled pedestrian crossing like you'd find in Australia - even right across from the shopping area (which is reasonably sized with a supermarket, pharmacy, hairdresser, restaurants... at least 15 businesses located together, so you'd think there'd be quite a few people trying to get there?)
So while you can walk there, it's much less convenient/pleasant. I have been guilty of the drive 100 metres to the store thing myself, even though I would never have done so back home, despite living in a very similar suburban area (Australia is just as suburbanised as the US, not like Europe at all, and yet has much better pedestrian access to things than here).
Very true. I'm the poster to which you're replying and I've actually been to Portland OR. It did feel very much like an Australian city in some ways (if you ignored the weather...)
Huh? Quite a few people I know live right in the Sydney CBD (World Square or similar complexes), or in very-nearby suburbs (Paddington etc.) Way out of my price range but not a bad place to live if you haven't got kids. A cousin of mine also lives in the Brissie CBD. I'm talking youngish, professional people here, generally single or married with no kids. Once you have a family, yeah you're right, it's out to the suburbs with you!
Sure it's not on the scale of NYC, but I don't think it's non-existent...
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You're right - I've never heard that expression in English.
Having said that, for some countries, it's true. Quite a few places (Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Canada, some Hong Kong denominations, and probably many others) now use the polymer banknotes which really don't have much of a smell, unlike the old paper/linen notes. I suppose coins still have a bit of a smell though (metallic-ish).
Don't get me wrong, I was a big Q3A player back in the day too. And Counterstrike (1.5, not 1.6 or the newer Source-engine based ones).
I'm talking specifically about the type of MMO I like here. First person shooters are a completely different genre, with a different set of desirable attributes. I'm not a fan of some of the modern FPSs that require you to do RPG-like grinding to level your character or unlock certain weapons etc.
While you're right that grinding and luck play a part in the type of game described, it's not without skill. It's just not "twitch skills" like in Q3A type games. It's long term strategy, efficiency, crunching the numbers and risks to determine what the best way of going about things is. It's also your interpersonal skills: should your clan ally itself with Powerful Clan X for protection, or will their bad reputation among others on the server make you more of a target if you do so? Should you invest in buying up a lot of Crafting Material Y because certain player-driven events are likely to drive the price of that material up in the future? Etc.
Horses for courses - I love games like EvE. If death is meaningless, or just a mild inconvenience, there is little incentive to play well, to think strategically, to form alliances with people you can truly trust, etc. But the adrenaline rush when you have something valuable and irreplaceable on the line? It's great. You need risk vs. reward in games ... if it's just reward (like WoW and other 'modern' MMOs) then what's the point?
I haven't actually played EvE myself but I've played MMOs with similarly brutal mechanics. Games where attempting to craft good equipment takes literally months of work and careful trading, all for just a 50/50 chance of success (on a diceroll - failure to craft consumes all the crafting materials and money required and gives you absolutely nothing back at all). Games where you drop equipment on death that can be picked up by anyone, no matter if it's the rarest and most valuable item on the server. Games where you can attack and kill anyone, any time (but, there are consequences for doing so, so you better make sure you know what you're doing). These games require you to be be strategic, to be alert and understand the other people you are playing with, to hedge your bets and to think outside the box. They are driven by the players and the intricate politics between powerful guilds/clans/etc, rather than a pre-defined storyline or script.
Of course that's just my opinion and you are welcome to your own. But there is a market for this kind of cutthroat game ... EvE's long-term success is proof of that. I wish I had discovered EvE years ago. It's exactly what I want in a game but by the time I found out about it I figured it was too late to 'get in' and I'd never be able to catch up to the established players (in terms of wealth, power, or whatever). I'm waiting for the next similar thing ... if it ever comes.
Well it's all relative. I grew up in Canberra so am definitely a cold weather person more than a hot weather person (though, Canberra gets both ... can be well below zero in winter, -7 or -8, and yet still hit 40 C in summer).
I'm living in the Midwest US at the moment though and that's a whole different kind of cold. This morning it was minus 29 C (and the high temperature was only minus 19 or so)...
Thanks for the stats ... confirms what I thought. Both AU and NZ are big travellers.
The Aussie passport also has 48 pages but lasts 10 years, interestingly. You can choose to get a double-length 96 page one for a small extra fee though.
For US residents/citizens, there is no outgoing immigration form to fill out, nor a desk you have to line up at and be let through, like in Australia (where you have both the green and yellow forms, one of incoming, one for outgoing).
Surrendering your I-94 or other temporary document upon leaving the US is not the same as a proper, compulsory immigration check upon departure.
BTW I'm Australian but live in the US and have done so for the last decade. I travel between the two regularly. So I do have some experience in this area.
I've never really bought into the animosity (good-humoured or otherwise) between Australians and New Zealanders. I mean, I just don't get it. When I was in NZ, it seemed at every opportunity, my hosts were jumping to compare things to Australia or make some snarky comment about Australians. As if they think we spend all our time over here thinking we are superior or comparing ourselves to you, or something.
I'd make "US vs. Canada" comparisons, but it's not really the same: New Zealand and Australia are far more similar than the US and Canada. (I've lived in both - the accents might be similar but the people and ideologies are very different). NZ is the only foreign country I've ever been in (I've been to 20+ countries) that didn't "feel" like a foreign country at all. Wandering around a NZ city feels just like Australia ... same brand names/company names, same 'look and feel' in urban design, hell, even the traffic signals at crossings make that same "slow beep for stop, chirp followed by fast beeping for walk" that I associate with home...
But the average Aussie doesn't really think about NZ in the same was as many Kiwis seem to regard Australia. I never thought about NZ to a huge extent before I went there ... every now and again, sure, but not to the extent NZ seems to be obsessed with comparisons to Oz. I always just thought of NZ as our very close brothers across the Tasman - the other half of the ANZACs, the only other country to which we extend special reciprocal rights (living here without a visa, access to each others' healthcare systems, etc.) We don't extend any of those courtesies to anyone else, even the Brits and Americans.
So I was a bit shocked at the fact that a lot (not all, but a lot) of New Zealanders seem to hate the place! Well maybe not hate, but their attitude definitely went beyond a bit of a good-natured ribbing. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't universal, but it was a noticeable theme in my time there (which was on a work assignment for a month, in and around Wellington, NOT a holiday). OTOH I've never heard Aussies say a bad word about NZ (outside of the context of sport, at least).
Anyway, it's no big deal, and maybe the sense of humour over there is a little different and I'm just a bad judge of what's 'serious' or not. But it certainly caught me off guard, and left a bit of a bitter taste. I always saw NZ as equal and close friends and now ... I dunno, I get the impression that the feelings don't go both ways. A bit of an eye opener. And honestly, I'm not sure what we've done in the past to deserve it.
Having said that, NZ is a beautiful place and I'll still visit again one day (for a proper holiday, not work). Who knows, might even retire there (hey, I'm a Canberran so I prefer the cooler weather to the blazing heat than infests most of the rest of Australia!).
While your statement is true, it has little to do with nationalized health care, per se. It's to do with the ACC, which is a body that is quite unique to New Zealand. And a great idea, if you ask me.
Plenty of places (virtually all other developed countries, the notable exception being the USA) have nationalized health care. But many/most of those still have lawsuits for personal injury, nonetheless.
Ah nevermind - your post history suggests Kiwi :) God forbid I call a New Zealander an Australian (worse than calling a Canadian an American), apologies.
I'm Australian and just remember growing up with exactly that kind of playground so I jumped to conclusions...
Australian? That totally describes a typical 80s-90s Aussie playground...
Hmmmm...
I suppose as an Aussie I should look for any opportunity to put the boot into our mates across the Tasman...but I feel that I have to stand up for them here. While I can't offer any solid evidence either way, your statement immediately triggers my "that doesn't sound right" sense. I haven't spent a huge amount of time in NZ myself (about a month), but I feel that in their travel habits they are similar to Australians, who are huge travellers (both within Australia and overseas). 70-75% of adult Australians have a passport and they use it too, with roughly a quarter of the population of the country travelling overseas in any given year (unlike the US, Australia has both incoming AND outgoing immigration checks, so we have very accurate statistics on this stuff).
Now to be clear, I'm not saying that:
- Your observation isn't true; or
- That Kiwis are the same as Aussies (culturally or otherwise).
But something doesn't add up here. The two countries are located in the same area of the world, with similar migrant and historical ties to Europe and other areas of the world. Both have a 'gap year' tradition where overseas travel is almost a rite of passage for kids after finishing school. Both have similar entitlements in terms of annual leave/vacation, long service leave (which IMO is the #1 reason Americans don't travel more - they get much less time off than other OECD nations), etc. So your observation is a bit puzzling.
However, one thought I did have is that "going to the other island" or going overseas requires a flight in NZ (with the exception of those living close to a car ferry or alternative way of linking the two islands). Californians may have visited OR, NV, AZ and Mexico ... but they can just get in a car and ... go. The middle-class/wealthier families have flown to Hawaii, and I think THAT is the apt comparison as it requires a (comparatively expensive) flight. Car travel is less of a barrier than air travel, even disregarding price. Requires less planning and organisation. Less documentation too. That might explain it to some extent. I wonder what's the percentage of people in CA that have been to HI, versus the percentage of NZers who have been to the other island?
Anyway yeah ... your anecdote surprises me I have to say. Never thought of NZ as insular at all...
We need a "-1 Whooooosh!" mod.
Yeah - none of the other social networks, including MySpace, had anywhere near the penetration that FB does now. Across age groups and across different countries. I live outside the US and although we were certainly aware MySpace existed, even in its heyday I knew almost nobody with a MySpace account. But Facebook? 1.2 billion users ... that's literally every second man, woman and child in the developed world (roughly).
It's popular because it's so useful single point of call to keep in touch with almost everyone you know. That wouldn't be the case if only 30% or 50% of the people you know are on there (with the rest being reachable by email, a different social network, or some other means). But for me, it's 90%+. It's hit that critical point where it has ~almost~ everyone on it, not just your 'Internet friends', but even the non-techy people (up to and including grandparents who don't touch a computer for any other reason, including email). Its attractiveness as a single point of contact is immense (efficient, simple, don't have to worry about maintaining x number of different accounts on different networks etc.)
It'll take something radically better from a competitor to break that momentum. I don't think it will die from natural attrition alone. Some have said "now that parents are on Facebook, kids will go somewhere else". While that's true, I doubt they'll forego Facebook altogether, due to above-mentioned ubiquity. They may just have FB account AND a "next cool thing" account, whatever that will be.
Haha yeah.
I also had the adapter that would allow you to use full size Master System cartridges on the GG (internally the hardware of the two machines was almost identical, so the adapter did little else than convert the pin layout of the large MS cartridges to the smaller GG ones and do some funkiness to account for the different aspect ratios of the screens). That greatly expanded the library of games you could play on it. However the adapter and the Master System cartridges were obviously very bulky!
Parent poster here.
Good point - having never voted myself I wasn't aware that there are multiple votes per person, so that makes sense now.
But I do know about JJJ and their worldwide audience ... because I am one. I'm Australian but live overseas and I'll be tuning in for the countdown :)
Cost definitely had something to do with it, but as one of the few people who used to have a Game Gear when I was in primary school (all my friends had Game Boys), the number one thing that sucked about the GG was the battery life. Because it had a backlit, colour screen, it only lasted an hour or two on batteries, whereas the GB would last all day.
Not only that, the GG required six AA batteries and these were damn expensive at the rate you went through them. You could use rechargeables but they lasted even less time than non-rechargeable batteries. I recall spending most of my time playing the GG plugged into AC power.
That doesn't sound right. There were 1.26 million votes cast in 2011 and 1.4 million votes cast this year (source: the official Hottest 100 webpage and Wikipedia). I can't find last year's figures but they would be somewhere in that range.
Fairly impressive for a country with a population of ~23M.
Replying to myself here, but just had to add, I took a look at the map to see exactly where this ISP serves. It's a tiny little town. In fact, I've actually been there (!?), as I drove from Dubuque to Cedar Falls on a recent trip to the US and this place falls on the highway between them. Small world.
Either way, even in a similar small town in Australia, you wouldn't be paying anywhere near that much, even if Telstra was your only option (provided you had a phone line of course ... if satellite was your only option then it may be comparable).
I'm Australian so are more than used to metered internet access. Unlike most Slashdotters, I like the concept of metered internet, in that it gives you options to only pay for what you need and not subsidise other users so much. Grandpa who just checks his email every day can get by fine on the $15 plan that has minimal allowance, while Johnny McTorrentLeecher can cough up for the large quota or unlimited plans.
But even in Australia, a country with a higher cost of living than the US and less in the way of developed internet infrastructure, the costs of metered plans are far, far lower than those quoted in TFA. 100 bucks for 25 GB is like something out of the early 2000s, when broadband itself was relatively new and DSL was mostly of the 256 kbps or 512 kbps variety. For comparison, the offerings of two Australian ISPs that are roughly indicative of a typical "cheaper ISP" and "more expensive but better quality ISP":
TPG (http://www.tpg.com.au/products_services/adsl2-standalone)
50 GB - $29.99
150 GB - $39.99
500 GB - $49.99
Unlimited - $59.99
Internode (http://www.internode.on.net/residential/adsl_broadband/easy_broadband/)
50 GB - $49.95
100 GB - $59.95
200 GB - $69.95
400 GB - $79.95
1.2 TB - $109.95
(And you can take $20/month off the above if you bundle a home phone service with the same provider too)
Comparing to this, this Iowa ISP's prices are insane. Metering sucks if THAT is what you have to pay (particularly in a country where unlimited plans are ubiquitous for less money).
Metering CAN work well, and CAN be fair (pay for what you need ... light users don't have to subsidize the heavy users). But it requires proper choice of plans (within an ISP) and proper competition BETWEEN ISPs to work. If there's a monopoly then yeah, it's very unfair. Fortunately for all the issues we have with internet in Australia, most people in urban or suburban areas (which is 90%+ of the population) do enjoy good ISP competition. If you have a phone line, then you can get DSL from a wide range of providers (at least a dozen, sometimes up to 20, depending on location).
No, this is nothing like Australia. Those rates are obscene. Australia may have metered internet but the prices are far, far lower.
25 USD for 5 GB? (Australian ISPs would typically give you ~50 GB for $30 AUD, which is roughly equal in value)
99.95 USD for a paltry 25 GB? WTF? 100 bucks in Australia gets you unlimited plans the ISPs that offer unlimited (e.g. TPG) or very-high-quota plans with others (Internode, one of the more expensive ISPs, gives you 1.2 TERAbytes per month for $109 AUD).
This is only "Welcome to Australia" if the Australia you're talking about is the Australia of the year 2000.
I'm 30. I drive about the same amount now as I did a decade ago - that is, not much at all. But the reasons are different.
10 years ago I lived on campus at university. Meals were provided and I had a downtown area within a 15-20 min walking distance (for going to a movie, eating out, etc). My classes were all a 5-10 minute walk away. So the only time I really drove was when me or my friends wanted to go somewhere further afield. Most of them didn't even own a car so we usually took mine. A new restaurant on the other side of the city or the odd weekend road trip to a different city a few hundred km away. But that was about it.
I hated that car. It was dirt cheap to buy but keeping it was so expensive for a poor starving student with virtually no disposable income. Registration/third party insurance was like 800 bucks a year and keeping it parked on campus near where I lived incurred a hefty fee too. I didn't even bother insuring it - wasn't worth it (other than the compulsory third party insurance that forms part of the registration fee where I live). It had plenty of mechanical issues that were quite costly to deal with too. It taught me that frankly, if you can get by without a car, you should do it, even if it's slightly less convenient. They are just money suckers.
Now I am married and make a good income. I could easily afford to drive as much as I wanted. However, I still don't drive much, and the main reason is the internet. I'm a consultant and so my time is split between working at home, or working onsite for a client, who could be anywhere in the country. So I FLY quite a bit now - several times a month, but probably don't drive many more miles than I did back in university. My wife and I go out, and do the grocery shopping once a week etc. but that doesn't add up to that much really.
Anyway I imagine the drop in teenage driving is due mostly to what I found driving when I was younger. It's very expensive to keep a car. It's not so much the cost of fuel but the other costs of keeping a vehicle. Most younger people I talk to say the same thing - waste of money. They prefer taking the bus/train (public transport is OKish in this city, though by no means excellent). Or they'll just get a taxi. Catching a cab a couple of times a week still ends up much cheaper than owning a car.
Also, why did my post end up nested under/replying to a completely different post than I initially selected? Argh new Slashdot is buggy,
Very true. I'm Australian and moved to America last year, so I have some personal experience of this.
In Australia I lived around 500 metres from the closest grocery store and we often walked there and filled a couple of large hessian bags with groceries and walked back. The groceries would last several days. The walk itself took 15 minutes out of your day and was a pleasant stroll through low density suburbia - on the sidewalk at first, then on a bike path behind the local high school, past a park and over a pedestrian bridge to the local shopping area.
I now live in America in a similar suburban area (large homes on separate blocks etc.) and the closest supermarket is, by luck, even closer. Maybe 150 metres or so - can literally see the roof of it out the window. However, despite the area being very similar in terms of density and layout, walking there is significantly more difficult. Firstly, while my street has a sidewalk, some don't. From where I am, I have to walk down this unsaved embankment next to a road and look very awkward in doing so. Not to mention its covered with knee deep snow this time of year. Secondly I then have to cross a four lane road and there is no tunnel, bridge or signalled pedestrian crossing like you'd find in Australia - even right across from the shopping area (which is reasonably sized with a supermarket, pharmacy, hairdresser, restaurants ... at least 15 businesses located together, so you'd think there'd be quite a few people trying to get there?)
So while you can walk there, it's much less convenient/pleasant. I have been guilty of the drive 100 metres to the store thing myself, even though I would never have done so back home, despite living in a very similar suburban area (Australia is just as suburbanised as the US, not like Europe at all, and yet has much better pedestrian access to things than here).
Very true. I'm the poster to which you're replying and I've actually been to Portland OR. It did feel very much like an Australian city in some ways (if you ignored the weather...)
Huh? Quite a few people I know live right in the Sydney CBD (World Square or similar complexes), or in very-nearby suburbs (Paddington etc.) Way out of my price range but not a bad place to live if you haven't got kids. A cousin of mine also lives in the Brissie CBD. I'm talking youngish, professional people here, generally single or married with no kids. Once you have a family, yeah you're right, it's out to the suburbs with you!
Sure it's not on the scale of NYC, but I don't think it's non-existent...